Losing fish like crazy

[Naughts]

To answer Byron, when I had the city water manager on the phone I asked him what they put into the water to make the PH so high and he said they don't specifically add anything to make the PH high - that's water from the Kansas river is, I guess very alkaline. Nobody that I know of goes fishing in in it - never heard of any creatures other than dead human bodies being thrown in it. Where I live it looks like you walk in the River - there are so many sandbars - but they disappear if we have a long rainy season. It actually flooded North Topeka (other side of the river from where I live) in the 1950's and caused a hell a lot of a disaster. I know there are a lot of farm fields built next to it so I suppose that's how they irrigate their crops. East of my location I guess there is much deeper water.

OK can't do the reading of GH and KH in MY tanks today - I have every kit you can get for freshwater and the one kit I need right now I cannot find, I destroyed my organization when I was madly looking for a temporary filter to use. I will definitely stay on it - I'm really curious to see what it reads with all these chemicals in it. I haven't measured it for some time since I wasn't doing anything that I knew of to affect GH or KH. For Christmas somebody bought me a nice electronic PH measure - if they only had an electronic measuring tool for everything that would be so timesaving. The PH of Tank A today was 6.12 (it was 7.0 , 6 days ago - tomorrow will be water change day). PH of Tank D is 6.89, water was changed last Friday and this is Sunday - it will likely be 6.1 by this Friday when we change the water again. The chemical we use is very predictable. It also causes a White cloud as seen in Tank A but it always settles down after about 30 minutes. I don't know where this white cloud came from unless my assistant poured in the entire jar, and she's way too careful to "experiment" with anything except how to get the water and debris in an out faster. I have a Phython but besides the fact I've nearly had a zillion fish want to swim in it - trying to get the water OUT of it when your done for the day is a huge nightmare, plus it overflows my sink to get the pressure I need for the suction. I have to have a 50 ft length and my oxygen cord gets trapped in it constantly but I'm sure with her help we could do it very fast. I just don't think it cleans out the bottom of the tank as well as the smaller gravel cleaners. For the person suggesting a hose - I couldn't lift one big enough to go from the outside faucet in the back (windows no longer opern) to around the house and down to the farthest bedroom and I have no place to store the water - but it would be handy. You'd need to keep the water warm until you used it though

My landloard doesn't know I even keep fish on these amazing floors and gives me a big break on the rent since my father basically made him a millionaire helping him pick out good houses to flip. Now he even does commercial property. Also - for the last two years before my father died he insisted there was a quit claim dead on this property and both sides were to go to me when he died because he knew his wife would move to Chicago and didn't want to manage rentals. The only person that also heard my father say this was my husband - who is also dead. When my father died and I talked to my stepmother about it she said "well I'm just going to charge you xxx amount and when it's bought you'll have to deal with them. I told her about the quit claim dead and my father's assurances that I inherited the duplex and she just gave me a stare and then said "I don't know about that". She told me how much he was paying for it - and I offered to match that offer - even though I knew it wouldn't appraise for that much and we'd renegotiate - I got a property tax statement in the mail and read it - she sold him two properties for the price she said she sold this one for. So SHE had already promised him the properties before my dad even died. Sorry I digress - but in my mind I feel like this place belongs to me. My dad would be sick over this and she'll go to hell. She has well over 500K in the bank, got 300K from my father that he didn't use up in the nursing home and yet and has no problem stealing $125 K from me. She's one of these ultra-right wing evangelical Trump supporters and started hating me when I argued with her. Everything is in a trust except this property because they hadn't updated the will - that's why my dad knew he could do it without dealing with the trust. In the trust I'll get 1/3 and her 2 children get 2/3 - not fair since my dad owned the bulk of poperties she had to sell off and gets to keep the money and use it until she dies and the trust comes into effect. The only thing nice I can say is that she did treat my father wonderfully the last couple of years of his life - lifting him, cleaning him and giving 100% of her life to him until her back was too injured (she's in her 80;s. So I guess that's worth 125K, at least my dad was taken care of better than I could have done. END OF RANT.

For Naughts - I have cut down the amount of pellets in half for tank A (a lot of bottom feeders) and same for Tank D since my cory cats are all gone but I do had 5 really big pellet eaters left but I could even put in fewer pellets since they aren't that large of fish. In my tank B which has BIG 5-8" fish I put in a LOT of pellets and every last one of them is gone within an hour. They just nibble on the flakes, and will eat tubiflex worms from my fingers - all day if I let them.

I'll keep lookin for the GH KH kit.

New feeding regime sounds great, keep it up!

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

I purchase most of my fish online because the few pet stores we have here don't carry many fish. I definitely don't want livebearers unless they can get me all males - no babies for me. The company I deal with seems to think that KH is more important than GH and all my fish fit in their parameters which is why I didn't worry about it. The ONLY issue is PH, they all fit in the KH parameters - now if I should just ignore PH then I could get just about any fish. So are you saying that as long as the fish fits in the GH parameters I don't need to worry about anything else, like PH? I'd have to do some research on the GH requirements since I purchased them based on KH. Also the only ones dying are over a year old which is considered their natural lifespan on some websites (I agree - the better cared for the longer they should live). We just did a deep clean of tank A and found all three cory cats - I thought they were all dead - but they are just really good at hiding. In fact even today I could only locate one of them. The fish that died was an older Gourami - one of the first ones I purchased. I always know when a fish has died because I get an ammonia spike. Then it's time to look for the body or remains and do a water change.

Right now I have the fish I have - good or bad. Until these pass on I won't be buying any more fish so at that time I'll consider your suggestions of some fish that tolerate hard water and high pH. The vast majority seem super healthy - the only ones that have died are some of the ones that are over 1 year old. I have a large number of others that old that haven't died. (I bought most of these fish all at once in two separate orders to get a large discount - overnight shipping costs a fortune so you don't want to buy 1 or 2 at a time and pay $40 for shipping. ) But that, in turn, messed up my cycle (I didn't have enough bacteria for that many fish) and I added Tetra Safe Start (tried two others first without any results) - this immediately cycled my tank. I just now stopped using it on a daily basis because all the tanks are cycled.

In the tank where the most recent fish died - there is still an ammonia spike, did a second water change and it's still showing an ammonia spike. I've searched and searched for more missing fish (I keep an inventory) and I'm not missing any now that I found my corycats. I also keep a log of whenever I do a water change and whenever I test the water. The other two tanks are showing all zero's with PH in the range of 6.8. The "problem tank" is showing .5 ammonia, .25 Nitrites and 10 Nitrates. PH 6.4. Fish all seem to be healthy. The day before it showed 1.0 ammonia, 0 Nitrites and 10 Nitrates so it looks like the tank is cycling the ammonia (plus I did two water changes in a row).

I'm getting better at not over feeding. If I do overfeed, I suction out the old food and debris before feeding again so it doesn't accumulate. A RO unit is out of the question. I'm not under any lease but this guy's website says "NO PETS" - I also have a cat. Plus don't the RO units take FOREVER to produce sufficient water - I need enough to do water changes on 3 - 29 gallon tanks per week and most of the home units say "8 gallons a day" - that won't cut it. I can purchase distilled water but I can't carry it and my grocery store rarely carries more than 5 or 6 gallons - so even if I asked to have 20 gallons delivered, they won't have it.

So thanks for all the advice, I'll let you know if I have any more deaths - they seem to have stopped for now. Now my problem is my large Gourami's just gave birth to a bunch of babies and the ones we could catch are now in my hospital tank. I'm grinding up flake food into powder and growing brine shrimp. I think most of them were eaten but the others are already getting rather large. There are still a small number in the tank but I'm not sure how to catch them, they'd get tangled/lost in a net. And I thought I only had male fish - never noticed a bubble nest which they say in this species can be quite beautiful. I do NOT need this right now but I couldn't let them all get eaten.

 

[Byron]

now if I should just ignore PH then I could get just about any fish. So are you saying that as long as the fish fits in the GH parameters I don't need to worry about anything else, like PH? I'd have to do some research on the GH requirements since I purchased them based on KH. Also the only ones dying are over a year old which is considered their natural lifespan on some websites (I agree - the better cared for the longer they should live).

Yes, the GH is the most important parameter because it directly affects the fish's physiology. The nice thing is that KH and pH tend to relate to the GH, usually though not always [water chemistry is indeed complex]. So if you have a GH of say 15 dGH, you can usually assume the KH will be similarly high and the pH above 7. If on the other hand the GH is at 6 dGH, it is soft water and the KH will generally be similar (though not always) but it doesn't really matter. The pH will likely be around 7, but here you may find that the water authority raises the pH to prevent pipe corrosion. What they use can vary, but often dissipates out and the pH will tend to lower, even below 7. Soft water species will be fine. The pH will do what it does depending upon the GH, KH, other natural influences like CO2, organics, calcareous substances, etc. Leave it alone and it will stabilize. Fish are more adaptable to pH provided it is stable than they are to a GH that is outside their preference.

I don't know what fish you are referring to, but most aquarium fish should live well beyond one or two years.